1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a software renewal method for an information processing apparatus and a program carrier signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Information processing apparatuses such as mobile phones and mobile information processing apparatuses have been widely used in recent years. And software has become increasingly complex in proportion to sophistication of the functions of these information processing apparatuses, hence requiring software renewals in response to defects or version upgrades for functional enhancement after the product shipment.
Accordingly, the conventional software renewals have involved the user operation. Such renewal, however, results in failure if the battery runs out of power, et cetera, during the renewal. And if the software renewal fails, the information processing apparatus cannot be restarted and therefore is unusable in the worst case. Such has been a technological problem.
To this end, for example, a technique has been disclosed by a patent document 1 listed below in which a non-volatile memory is externally added to a mobile phone, a service program to be renewed is temporarily backed up in the non-volatile memory and then the program in the mobile phone is renewed by a downloaded service program. The technique disclosed by the patent document 1, however, requires an auxiliary non-volatile memory for such a backup.
Meanwhile, in the patent document 2 below, a technique has been disclosed in which a remaining battery power and an electrical field level of the receiving terminal, and in addition, the data size are all detected at the time of downloading data to a mobile terminal through a network, and accordingly the downloading is cancelled if these values are below predefined levels. The technique disclosed by the patent document 2, however, is faced with a technological problem of being unable to manage by a finely adjusted response to the downloading data sizes because an availability of downloading is judged by uniform threshold values such as a remaining battery power and an electrical field level of the receiving terminal, and in addition, the data size.
Furthermore in the patent document 3 below, a technique is disclosed in which a memory rewriting apparatus is connected to a mobile phone having no function of self-rewriting data and the data in the mobile phone is renewed by a new version data by the memory rewriting apparatus while the remaining battery power in the mobile phone is being monitored by the apparatus. The technique disclosed by the patent document 3, however, has a problem of requiring such apparatus for a data renewal in addition to the mobile phone.
[Patent document 1] Japanese patent laid-open application publication 2002-207599.
[Patent document 2] Japanese patent laid-open application publication 2003-87863.
[Patent document 3] Japanese patent laid-open application publication 2003-271464.